The Games Handsets Play

When it comes to wireless gaming, how you play isn't as important as what you play.

Gaming is an increasingly hot area of wireless applications, and ARC Group (www.arcgroup.com) predicts the number of wireless-gaming users will increase from 43 million today to nearly 850 million users by 2006.

“These trends can be attributed to improvements in access speeds facilitated by 2.5G and 3G network technologies, which should act as an enabler of content-rich multiplayer online games and highly interactive networked games available over WAP and other XML-based technologies such as cHTML,” said Rupert Reid, ARC analyst & consultant.

Another key to this growth is games embedded in handsets, said Graham Thomas, Nokia (www.nokia.com) gaming division general manager.

For example, Nokia's 3395 GSM phone features arcade-style games including the widely popular Snake II. Nokia's Communicator is coming to the United States in 2002 and features a snowboarding game with graphics close to PlayStation-like quality.

Ericsson's (www.ericsson.com) T28, A3618 and A2638sc handsets have several games, including Solitaire and Tetris. Samsung's (www.samsung.com) SGH-N100 handset features 11 embedded games.

According to ARC Group, embedded games such as Snake and chess currently comprise 62% of the wireless games market. That figure is expected to drop to 24% by 2006. Embedded games, however, still will represent a sizeable portion of the total market with 263.7 million users.

Thomas said embedded games play an essential role: encouraging people who don't want to download or pay for games to play.

“A lot of people play games (because they're in the phones) that would not otherwise play,” he said.

Despite greater uptake of more sophisticated gaming applications, embedded models will continue to be important strategically in their role as differentiating features for manufacturers, distribution channels for game developers and sponsorship opportunities for advertisers, according to Reid.

“It is likely that embedded games will continue to hold a strong position in the mass market,” Reid said.